


but i just got the taste for it

by orthostatics



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Is A Beautiful Princess, F/M, Fluff, Holding Hands, Ladrien | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, POV Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, adrien and ladybug mostly succeed at walking nearly two blocks without a major incident, and we're all very proud of them i'm sure., marinette knows a lot more about fashion than adrien does, street harassment (minor), teens attempt to derive "hanging out with your crush" from first principles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orthostatics/pseuds/orthostatics
Summary: Adrien sat, abandoned by his friends, in his sad, solitary chair.The chair was, technically, part of the outdoor seating of a café, but he’d found that if you just told café owners your name, or showed them your Instagram as proof of identity, they usually let you sit down for quite a while without buying anything. He’d never understood why more people didn’t use that trick.---Adrien and Ladybug, in a moment of great romantic daring, walk together for nearly two blocks.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 3
Kudos: 46





	but i just got the taste for it

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Carly Rae Jepsen's "I Really Like You".
> 
> In my terrible secret heart this fic would be part of a series titled "Moments From Early In My Relationship To My Girlfriend, But With Adrien Agreste"; perhaps it is comforting to know that, to the best of my awareness, no continuations of such a series are forthcoming now or ever.

Adrien was hunched in a chair on the sidewalk, thinking sad thoughts.

A series of inexplicable yet terrible events had sadly affected his afternoon. First, his father’s abrupt departure from a marketing meeting, which Adrien was already only attending so marketing people could point at him and say difficult-to-understand things about whether his public image was compatible with serif fonts. Then, a few blocks away, an akuma had erupted out of a subway stop and begun to call for an end to busking, and he’d had to try to sneak out of the Gabriel offices, which was, weirdly enough, a new experience for him. The fight had been short and brutally unfun; he’d barely done anything except dodge the akuma’s silencing ray about ten times a second. Then, because of the interruption to the meeting, he’d been kept nearly another hour, and completely missed seeing anyone. Apparently Marinette had been suddenly called away, and after waiting for her Alya and Nino had decided to go back to Nino’s place and do homework instead. Thus Adrien’s current position, abandoned by his friends, in his sad, solitary chair.

The chair was, technically, part of the outdoor seating of a café, but he’d found that if you just told café owners your name, or showed them your Instagram as proof of identity, they usually let you sit down for quite a while without buying anything. He’d never understood why more people didn’t use that trick.

“Bonjour, Adrien!” Ladybug said.

He bolted upright.

She was in front of him, yoyo in hand like she’d been patrolling the city. And maybe she had; Ladybug probably had all kinds of extra responsibilities he didn’t know about. But now she was here! In front of him. Him as _Adrien,_ who she’d barely even spoken to!

“I saw that you were sitting there by yourself,” she said, “and I thought you might want someone to keep you company.” She dropped her eyes modestly. “Unless you’re busy, of course. Headed somewhere? I could walk with you, if you like.”

On the one hand, it was maybe kind of dangerous for Ladybug to hang out openly with Chat Noir’s civilian identity; on the other hand, who fucking cares, right? “Yes,” he blurted, “I’d like— walking— yeah, I’d like that.” He stood quickly as she came forward, smiling at him.

Unthinkingly, he tried to swing around to stand on her right, just as she reached out with her left hand. They collided in the middle, knocking each other backwards. Ladybug recovered immediately, of course, because she was a superhero, and extremely cool. Adrien needed a step to rebalance, but fencing wasn’t bad if you wanted to keep your footing, even if it didn’t look very suave.

“Uh—” he’d ended up more or less to the right of her anyway, so he fell in on that side after all. “My apologies, Ladybug.” Weirdly formal, maybe, but even if she’d shown up talking like they’d known each other forever, he didn’t want to act like Chat in return; for several reasons that didn’t sound like a winning strategy.

They managed, after his fumbling, to actually start walking forward, more or less in the direction of the National Archives.

“So… what was that about?” Ladybug said, looking away from him, at the Amorino storefront down the street. Adrien wondered if he should offer to buy her ice cream. No, better not; it wasn’t really a date if she’d just shown up, and he didn’t want to make it a thing. And she seemed a little distant, now, probably confused by how weird he’d been. Adrien figured he’d better explain in a funny way, to make up for it.

“My parents sent me to etiquette classes when I was young,” Adrien said, conspiratorial, “and for some reason it was really important that, if I’m walking with a _lady,_ ”—the emphasis made her laugh (!)— “I always walk on the side nearer the street. You know, so passing carriages can’t splash her dress!”

“Well,” Ladybug said. “I really appreciate you taking all that effort to protect my, you know, magic, damage-repelling suit from mud. I was really concerned. Definitely better to get it all over your _thousand-dollar white shirt_.”

“Oh, here,” she said in an aside, and reached out. As he’d watched her look at a person eating gelato he’d missed a construction site, with a fence half-collapsed off the road. He swayed to avoid it; at the same time, he reached back, and held her hand. At that point it occurred to him that she might have been trying to do something else, like gesture, or point. He looked back at her. She was flushed bright red.

Adrien decided continuing blindly on his accidental course was the better part of valor at this point.

“No, no, mademoiselle,” Adrien said. “An Agreste would never wear a plain shirt that cost _only a thousand dollars_.”

“Of course!” Ladybug said. “God forbid. Oh, are those the lucite Zannotis?”

“Oh. I think so, yeah,” Adrien said, twisting to look at the hot pink, translucent heel of his own boot. “Honestly, I’m not really this avant-garde on my own, but my father wants me to try to branch out more into the street-style model thing.”

“Well, it’s only avant-garde in that, like, Lucite heels have been kind of in and out since the seventies? For men, anyway,” she said. “But it’s _been_ a thing.” They crowded aside to let a pack of Canadian tourists go by, chattering in intriguingly nasal Montréal French. “Your dad is really just cramming you into whatever designer samples he has and just sending you out to stand in front of paparazzi?”

“I guess?” Adrien shrugged. “When _I_ wear the same thing every day for a year I’m ‘not doing my part to represent the brand’, but apparently when _he_ does it it’s ‘a uniform’.”

Ladybug laughed again. Adrien felt so, so, so cool. 

“But really I don’t mind,” he added, “because it means I get to leave the house by myself.” Ladybug suddenly looked sad. Oh, crap, not being allowed to leave the house _wasn’t_ cool, Adrien had forgotten. Adrien was actually not cool at all.

“Hey!” A man’s voice calling, from across the street, insistent. “ _Hey_.”

They both turned their heads automatically. The man was a stranger, maybe forty-five, maybe fifty, in a black baseball cap and a windbreaker. He waved, once they’d looked at him.

Adrien felt Ladybug tense up. Her grip on his hand ratcheted up, a notch at a time, into the realm of the actually uncomfortable. Of course, Ladybug should feel free to bruise his metacarpals anytime she wanted. It’s not like her wanted her to hold his hand any _less_.

“Listen, man,” the stranger said. Something was odd about his voice; he was slurring his vowels a little, maybe. Adrien started to wish Ladybug was walking on the street side. The man paused and adjusted his hat.

“You take care of that princess!” he yelled, apparently concluding his train of thought. “You take care of that princess, you hear?”

Adrien felt his insides freeze with embarrassment and humiliation. Was he supposed to agree? Yell back at him? Defend Ladybug, somehow?

Next to him, Ladybug gave an angry little huff. Then she leaned forward.

“Don’t worry, I will!” she called. She had a sweet, high-pitched laugh.

It took almost a block for her to slow down and let go of his hand. Adrien flexed it surreptitiously. She huffed again and shook her head a few times, like she was trying to clear it.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “I guess that was, uh, pretty harmless, relatively speaking. Getting yelled at on the street always puts me on the defensive.” She glanced over at Adrien and paused.

He figured that was probably because of how hot he could feel himself blushing.

“I’m a princess, huh?” He’d hoped his voice wouldn’t squeak as much as it did when he asked.

Ladybug smiled wide, all the tension dropped out of her stance. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you are.” 

Feeling very brave, and not only because of the risk of injury, he reached out to take her hand again.


End file.
